


5 times Phil Coulson got shot (and one time Melinda May couldn't save him)

by Putzi_14



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Melinda May, BAMF Phil Coulson, Before Agents of Shield Timeline, F/M, Fluff, I AM SORRY, I hope, No Bahrain, No character death!!!, Not very Andrew Garner friendly, Potato Phil, So much angst, Some Swearing, Yes that works, non graphic/explicit torture, phil is hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 10:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11804376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Putzi_14/pseuds/Putzi_14
Summary: What it says in the title and the tags. Angst, Fluff and more. I am so bad at tags. Rated M for some violance.





	5 times Phil Coulson got shot (and one time Melinda May couldn't save him)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first longer story, I hope you enjoy this, please leave me a comment :D Sorry for mistakes, this is not betad and English is not my first language :|

1.

The first time Phil Coulson got shot he was nine years old, sitting on the shoulders of his father and watching the street parade walk by, while enjoying one of the rare moments with his father, that didn't involve that red Corvette in their driveway. His little hands had grabbed his fathers chin and he had rested his cheek on his hair, when a loud noise disturbed the blissful moment.  
Before Phil knew what happened, his father was falling to his knees with him and the next moment layed on the ground, blood streaming out of a hole in his throat, coughing and searching for his son with his confused eyes. Phil, who landed beside his father, was screaming for him, for help, his small hands pushing on the man's chest, like he had seen in movies. But unlike in them, his father didn't stood up again. Just as the ambulance came in, and a paramedic pulled Phil away from the body, he noticed a sharp pain in his leg. There was a cut on his thigh, obviously from the bullet killing his father. One of the medics saw it and cleaned the small wound, whilst Phil could do nothing but watch how the Police emerged, sending the crowd that had gathered away and searched for the marksman. They never fond him. Neither fond they a single reason for this assassination. All that Phil had left was the scar on his leg and the memory of the reason it was there. He never showed it to anyone, and if someone saw it, he told them it was from an accident, the memory to painful to review.

 

2.  
It was on the shooting range in the Academy, when some first semester idiot didn't secured his gun correctly and shot him in the arm. Phil wasn't knew to weapons, two years being a cadet at SHIELD and three more with the rangers taught him how to use them. He was more annoyed than angry with the cadet, mostly because it had ruined his new SHIELD sweater, which he just got the week before and loved. No, the one who was angry was his best friend and going-to-be-partner Melinda May aka 'the only one hurting this potato is me when he deserves it'. At first he found it weird, that she called him a potato, nobody had done something similar before. Even his mother, before she passed away a few years before he made it to SHIELD, had mostly called him Phillip or Pip, like his father used to. When asking her, why she did that, Melinda just shrugged. “You act like one, you look like one – why not call you Potato. It's something special only I will call you. Be glad, some people I just call dumb.” She would wink at him and he knew why he fell in love with her. He even forgot about the pain in his arm as he watched her fold that cadet together and later choose him for a hand-to-hand combat match. That poor guy didn't knew how screwed he was till he layed on the mats, his arm twisted behind him with Melinda holding him down, after only four seconds. With his arm in a sling, he stood at the edge, watching her proudly. Some would say, he let himself be protected by Melinda May, but the truth was, he would've done the exact same thing for her, even would take a bullet for her, if he needed to.

 

3.  
That moment came earlier than Phil had thought it would. Three years into their time as real Partners and Agents, they had a little undercover op in Madrid. Some weapon handlers had made the city to their main store. May and Coulson's job was simply to locate them and give the information to the strike team. Easier said than done. The first two locations were easy found and marked, but the last one was stronger observed and they got detected. For the Agents luck, one of the guys was so stupid to open the door, revealing a few boxes with explosives. Phil needed two shots and the whole thing blew up with the handlers in it, but it wasn't big enough to take the partners in danger. Still, when the scene had calmed down a little, Melinda noticed blood on Phil's shoulder. A bullet had glanced him yet again, nothing too serious. When the strike team came to them, Melinda took care of the wound and they walked back to Phil's precious Lola. No one was allowed to touch, let alone drive her, but his shoulder ached when he moved it too much. He was wearing a defeated, yet somehow relieved look on his face, when he pulled out the keys and gave them to Melinda. She knew this was coming when she cleaned that wound, but prepared she was not. How could she? That car was a legend and most important thing to Phil Coulson. Nevertheless she accepted the keys, with him saying “Just, please, don't let anyone know. Promise.”  
She smiled. He looked cute when he said things like that, especially with that mustache of his. And he kept asking why he was a potato to her. “Of course, I promise. But under one condition.” Phil's eyes grew wide, horrifying scenes came to his mind as he awaited the 'Prank-Queen's condition.  
She leaned closer to him, before talking. “Either, you grow that beard completely or as soon as we are out of here, you're going to loose that thing under your nose.”

 

4.  
The fourth time Phil gets shot, he's alone, somewhere in Russia and thirty-two years old. It's a sign of a good Agent getting shot so rarely. He feels sad that he lets his series tear, but for his defense, being tied to the ceiling leaved him with no other choice than taking the shot to his right shoulder, this time the full bullet. He would punch himself for getting caught, if the Russians hadn't took on that business already. The only thing not hurting in that moment was his mouth, so it thought it would be entertaining to annoy his captors. They just replied with more beating and the occasional cut in his limbs. But the shot remained aching the most. Bloodied as he was, everything felt numb from the hits he took, except for that open and stinging wound. Phil wished he could regret taking on that stupid mission, but the alternative was no option. Crazy thing, how he could let himself die in some fucked up Russian torture chamber, but not going to the wedding of his best friend. 'Yeah, best friend. That's why you can't be too long in the same room like her without thinking how soft her lips would feel on yours and how much you are longing to hold her in your arms.' It was true, he feared loosing her so much, that he couldn't even admit to himself how much he loved her. Phil felt like crying as he remembered the pained look on her face when he told Melinda of the mission that he was attending to. It wasn't a complete lie when he told her he had to go, it was true, someone recommended him for the mission, but he could have easily said “No”. It wasn't like he couldn't be happy for her, he was, he truly was! And he liked that guy, Andrew, he was good for her. But Phil had loved his best friend for over a decade now, and seeing her going down the aisle and marrying another man was too much for him. If he survived this hellhole, he knew he could live with May being married, being the happy wife to someone else, having kids and having him as her best friend and partner. The thought of her in the white dress with the little blue flowers on it, which he choose with her, made his heart ache. She looked like a Disney princess when she stood in front of him and in that moment, he knew he was loosing her forever. She would find the occasional excuse for not spending that evening with him, her hours in work would be cut back and they would only see each other on really important missions or the one or other holiday party. Tears were now rolling down his face and he was glad his captors were busy elsewhere and left him alone. The pain in his shoulder creeping back, his last thoughts remaining about loosing the woman meaning everything to him, whilst slowly sinking into unconsciousness.

He was rescued, two hours later. He woke up to the face of one Melinda May (now Garner) one week later in a hospital. Phil didn't asked why she wasn't on honeymoon or what she did here, trembling hands holding his bruised one. The smile she gave him made him care less and less.

 

5.  
It was 6 years later when he got shot the fifth time. Melinda had just called him and told him about the divorce, begging him to come over, so she didn't need to spend the night alone. She needed her friend, and he was there. On his way he stopped at a late night shop, buying a bucket of ice-cream and some tequila like a best friend would do. They both had seen it coming for weeks now, Andrew couldn't get used to her dangerous work anymore and was far to often somewhere else than home. Phil hadn't told Melinda anything about the affair her husband had, not wanting to hurt her even more, but he did confronted the man with it. It wasn't a nice talk and he left the man with the choice of either saving his marriage with Melinda or ending the whole thing. Phil had thought Andrew would be a better man than that. Apparently he was wrong. Which was why he stood at 1 am in front of a freezer, deciding over vanilla or hazelnut, when two men came in robbing the store. In retrospect, Phil knew he could have handled the situation far more clever, at the end it only counted that these men where stopped, even if it means that he was now lying in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound in his leg. It was after 2 am that Melinda came into his room, looking at him mockingly before laughing. And he couldn't stop himself from joining her, the thought of the top Agent at SHIELD getting shot by some youngsters with a gun because he wanted ice-cream for his crying friend was hilarious for them. They sat there the whole night, talking, eating ice Melinda had brought with her, but it ended with her kissing him, first soft, than more urgent, lips pressing, nibbling, devouring until they had to stop when a nurse came in checking on them because the heart monitor he was strapped to went wild. She turned around again, after seeing them, but not without the wink that the bed would not be strong enough for athletic workout, neither would his leg. They laughed again when the nurse was gone, still holding hands. Phil looked at Melinda, her beauty open to him. He always found her most beautiful when she laughed. But then, she was at every given time the most stunning woman to him. Still, he could not stop himself from asking, why now. Her smile just grew wider. “Why wait any longer?”.

 

 

… and that one time she couldn't save him.

For a forty-five year old trained Agent, he should've known better. This was the worst place he could've chosen to hide. Backup was no option, as Melinda compromised by his chaser. Phil could still not believe that she would betray him like this, defecting to the enemy, leaving him alone with only one shot left. Than he was hearing them, footsteps coming fast two his location, than slowing down just meters away, down the hall. Taking a deep breath, he prepared himself to either defeat his enemy or die in his line of duty. One last breath, than he sprang around the corner, but he wasn't fast enough before he took that shot straight to his chest, falling to his knees, than on the ground with loud bump and an even louder groan.  
“I won! I have daddy!” His son sprang happily over the floor and ran into his mothers arms, when she came up the stairs. Phil rolled to his back, the Nerfgun falling dramatically out of his hand. “That was not fair, you bribed your mother!” Closing his eyes, Phil was happy for laying down for a moment, before hearing footsteps again and then his five-year-old son just flopped down on his stomach, making him groan with small pain for real this time. “But it worked. Did it not?” Damn this little guy, grinning like his mother and having the same evil mind. One day, he swears, they would be the death of him. But right now, as he looked into the bright brown eyes of his son, he knew it was worth it. With the boy in his arms he stood up, walking up to Melinda, who stood there, admiring her men and smiling. They both never thought they could have this, a life together, being happy together, but the impossible happened. Kissing her felt so natural in this moment, even with a shrieking son in his arms. Smiling at each other, they said it at the same time, for the what must be be the millionth time, but never regretting it.  
“I love you.”

Happy End.


End file.
